


Winter Wren

by richmahogany



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen, Sad, but a bit of light at the end of the tunnel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 22:36:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13533963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/richmahogany/pseuds/richmahogany
Summary: When Harold dies in his arms, John stops caring about anything. He doesn't care about the team. He doesn't care about the Numbers. He doesn't care about himself. And he certainly doesn't care about the crippled little bird that keeps pestering him in the park.





	Winter Wren

The temperature had dropped a few degrees since the morning, and a light snowfall had set in. John stayed where he was, sitting on the park bench and staring into empty space. He didn’t feel the cold. He didn’t feel anything. So what if he froze, so what if he caught pneumonia or whatever – it might be quicker than drinking himself to death. He wasn’t truly alive anyway. His life had ended the moment Harold died in his arms.

Every night in his dreams he was forced to relive it. The approach to the abandoned warehouse where they knew their perpetrator was holed up. Getting out of the car with Shaw, leaving Harold behind, out of danger. Creeping up to the entrance, then barging in, guns raised. And then the realization that the perp had left the building by a hidden door the moment that they’d entered. The sound of a single gunshot from outside. The sinking feeling in his gut as they raced back outside to the car. And then the sight of his worst nightmare come true: Harold lying motionless on the ground, blood pooling beneath him. He barely noticed Shaw dropping the perp with a single shot of her own. He knelt beside Harold, frantically opening the blood-soaked coat and realizing that he was too late. He cradled Harold in his arms, calling his name, pleading with him. Harold looked at him for a long moment, unable to speak. Then the light went out in his eyes. He was gone.

At that moment a black hole opened underneath John, sucking him in, obliterating the world and everything in it. From that second onwards, he was as good as dead. He gently lowered Harold to the ground and, ignoring Shaw’s shouting at him, picked up his gun, walked away and disappeared.

He didn’t care about anything anymore. He didn’t care about the team. He destroyed his cell phone and avoided all contact with them. He didn’t care about the Numbers. He ignored any payphones that rang as he went past, and eventually they stopped ringing. He didn’t care about himself either. His life meant nothing to him, and he had resumed his old project of drinking himself to death.

He had pretty much reverted to the state he’d been in when Harold first found him, with a few differences. This time round, he still had his apartment, although he didn’t go there much. Sometimes he preferred to sleep in cheap hotels, and a few times he’d even slept rough. He still had his nice clothes. And he still had quite a lot of his money. All that meant to him now though was that he could buy better quality whiskey to drink himself into a stupor with. Otherwise he did what he had done in his previous life: walk the streets, ride the subway for hours, sit on park benches, and drink.

He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a couple of large sips. As he lowered the bottle again, he heard a chirping noise. He looked, and in front of him on the ground sat a bird. It was a tiny bird, mousy-brown on the back, slightly speckled on the belly, with a delicate little beak and a cheeky tail that stood up straight behind it. It seemed to be looking straight at him with its beady black eye. To his surprise, John could feel something like anger rising in him. That bird had no business staring at him like that. Because John recognised that look: it was exactly the kind of disapproving look that Harold used to give him whenever he cleaned his guns in the library or did something else inappropriate. So did the bird disapprove of his drinking now?

“Shut up!” he said to the bird, rather irrationally.

The bird gave an indignant chirp and hopped away.

John immediately forgot about the bird, until a few days later, when he happened to sit on the same bench, drinking. There was a soft rustle behind him, and the little bird came hopping round the bench, stopped in front of him and eyed him again. John didn’t say anything, but endured the bird’s disapproving gaze. He didn’t feel angry this time, but sad, because the bird reminded him so much of Harold. Eventually the bird decided it had scolded him enough, and hopped away to look for some food.

Over the next few weeks John found himself visiting this particular bench more often. At first he came out of curiosity, to see if the bird was there, and if it still disapproved of his drinking. He knew it was just an animal, which didn’t have any opinions on him one way or the other, but still he couldn’t help feeling chastised every time the tiny creature gave him “the look” and chirped at him. After a while he had to admit to himself that he looked forward to seeing the bird, and was disappointed when it didn’t appear.

No, he didn’t care about the bird any more than he cared about anything else. But since he didn’t have anything better to do with his time, he went into a library to find the bird in a guide. Harold, of course, would have been able to tell him immediately what kind of bird it was, its habits and habitat, its behavior and much more. Harold had loved birds. John sighed and pushed the thought away. He took a book from a shelf and leafed through it. There, that was the bird he had seen: “Winter Wren. A secretive little bird of dense woods,” he read, “behaving more like a mouse than a bird, remaining out of sight, but giving an occasional kimp-kimp call note.” He looked at the accompanying map. “Despite the name leaves most northern areas in winter,” said the caption. So why was that bird even here? How would it survive the winter? Then he remembered what he had observed in the park. Often, when there were several birds squabbling over food, the tiny wren was pecked away by bigger birds. It would evade their hacking beaks by hopping aside, but it never flew off. John had been puzzled by that at first, but when he had observed more closely he realised: the wren couldn’t fly. There was something wrong with one of its wings, it couldn’t extend it fully. It could flutter a bit and hop onto the lowest twigs of the bushes and hedges, but it couldn’t actually fly. Maybe what had happened was this: it had come up from the south in spring to breed, had injured its wing, which then never healed properly, and now it was stuck in New York and couldn’t get back.

Poor bird, John thought. It would probably die soon. But then at least its troubles would be over. That, at any rate, was what he was hoping for himself. He shrugged, put the book back on the shelf and went out into the rain.

That night he had the usual dream again. The raid on the warehouse, the perp escaping, John and Shaw bursting out trying to catch him. But then something changed. Instead of Harold dying on the ground, there was nothing. No, there was something. Something very small. John stepped closer and bent down. It was the wren. Lying on its back with its feet pulled up close to its belly, eyes closed, beak slightly open. It was clearly dead. With a feeling of infinite sadness John picked up the stiff little corpse. It was icy cold, frozen. That bird had died in ice and snow, because it couldn’t fly, because it couldn’t escape the New York winter, and John hadn’t done anything about it, even though he had known this would happen. His sadness changed to overwhelming guilt. It was his fault that the little bird had died. He could have prevented it, and he didn’t.

When he woke up, that was still the overriding thought on his mind. He had lived with the guilt over Harold’s death for months now, and it had made him uncaring towards anything else. It was too late for Harold, but what about the bird? He walked to the window and looked outside. Everything was covered in a thick layer of white. It had snowed overnight, but now the sky was clear. It was probably very cold out there. John opened the window and touched the snow on the windowsill. The top layer had turned into a crust of ice. He thought of the little wren again. It would almost be impossible for it to find any food now. Everything would be covered in snow and ice in the park, and it could not fly around to look for food elsewhere. Suddenly he realized that he was the only one who could save that bird. Nobody knew about it, nobody else would have noticed that it was crippled and unable to forage further out. It was his reponsibility to save it, and it would be his fault if it died. Did he really want to burden himself with more guilt?

John closed the window and started to put his clothes on. Like most mornings he was hungover, and his hands were shaking as he pulled up his pants, but still today was different. Today he had something to do. Today he had a purpose.

He put on his coat and went outside. As he had expected, it was freezing cold, and the sidewalks were slippery with ice. He started to walk, but what was he actually going to do? The bird needed both food and warmth. But what did Winter Wrens eat? And where could he find bird food? He spotted a pharmacy on the corner and went in. The cashier looked at him dubiously, trying to figure out whether he was a homeless addict or just a regular guy looking for a hangover cure. He was unshaven and unkempt and looked like he hadn’t showered in a week (which he hadn’t), but his clothes were clearly of a superior quality, although rumpled and spattered with mud. The cashier must have decided that a vagrant would hardly be dressed in a cashmere coat and left him alone.

John wandered through the aisles, not really knowing what to look for. Perhaps some sort of healthfood would do, that always looked like birdseed anyway. He picked up a bag of something called “Dr Krause’s Superfood Muesli”, which seemed to consist of oats, almonds and a variety of seeds. That would do. He paid, and made his way to the park.  
When he arrived at his usual bench, everything was quiet. The snow and ice made walking difficult, and there were hardly any people around. Suddenly he had doubts about his mission. Would he even find the bird? Or was he too late, and had it died overnight? He started to peer into the undergrowth, calling quietly. Nothing. He sprinkled some of the food around the bench and waited. Finally he heard a soft rustling noise behind him. He held his breath. And then the wren came out from underneath the bench, looked at him, looked at the food, and started pecking an oat flake. Relief washed over John. The bird was alive and unharmed, and eager for the food. As he watched, he noticed that it ignored the seeds and the bigger flakes, only going for the tiniest morsels. Of course, he realized, with such a small delicate beak it wouldn’t be able to break up anything bigger. He took an almond out of the bag, put it on the bench, crushed it under his heel, swept the crumbs into his hand and offered them to the bird. The wren looked at him again, chirped, and started to take the food out of his hand. John held his breath again, fearing he would scare it away, but it was clear that the bird trusted him. A warm feeling spread through John’s whole being. Something, someone, trusted him, depended on him, let him care. He had thought that he would never feel like that again. He would not let himself feel it again, because it had almost killed him when it went wrong last time. Harold had depended on him, trusted him, and he had failed. But why should an innocent bird pay for the mistakes he had made in the past? He knew with a certainty he had not felt for months that he could not dodge that responsibility.

The wren had eaten all it could for the moment, but it stayed where it was, looking at John. Very slowly John put his gloves back on and held out his hand towards the wren once more. Without hesitation the bird hopped onto John’s hand and let him lift it up. He cupped his other hand over the bird, and it happily hunkered down and let itself be warmed for a while.  
He just sat there and watched the skies cloud over again. He could feel the tiny heart fluttering against his fingers. Today he had done a good job, he thought. He had saved a life. That’s what he was meant to do. That was his purpose. He thought he had lost it, but he had been wrong. That was what Harold had seen in him: a protector, someone who helped people, someone who saved lives. Harold wouldn’t have wanted him to give that up, but it had taken a tiny bird to show him that. Harold was gone, but the purpose he had given John was still there, and he couldn’t ignore it any longer. He could almost hear Harold say:

“Didn’t you once thank me for giving you a job? Well, why are you not doing it then?”

The bird stirred between his hands and twisted its head round to look at him. It no longer looked disapproving, but it seemed to echo the thought that had just been on John’s mind:

“You have a job to do. Do it.”

It started to snow again. Time to go. But what was he going to do with the wren? He needed to keep it warm. He thought for a moment to take it home with him, but that would be wrong. It was a wild bird, and to remove it from its familiar environment and from nature would distress it unnecessarily. John stood up, very slowly, still holding the bird in one hand. With the other he pulled his scarf off his neck, knelt down by the bushes behind the bench and twisted the scarf round some of the lower twigs. He bunched it up into a ball-shaped nest, off the ground but with enough footholds so that the wren could reach it without flying. Then he gently slipped the bird between the folds of the scarf, where it sat quite happily. He sprinkled some more food around the bench, taking care to add a few more crushed almonds, and with a last look at the nest he left. He would come back every day, to make sure that no harm came to the little wren.

He took the subway back into the heart of the city. Here it was quieter than usual as well. The snow and ice had reduced the traffic, and only those who had to were walking around the streets. When he passed a payphone, John suddenly knew what he had to do. He dialled a number and waited. Finally someone at the other end picked up the receiver and barked:

“Yeah, what?”

“Hello Lionel,” said John. “We need to talk.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bird description copied from the www.audubon.org website. Do look up the Winter Wren, it's seriously cute!


End file.
